In this article, you’ll learn what trills are, how to recognize them in sheet music, and how to practice them.

Vibrato is an important skill to master on the violin; however, it is not the most important skill. I like to think of vibrato as the icing on the cake. Would you eat a big ball of icing by itself?! I know I wouldn’t! Icing tastes best when it is on top of an already delicious cake, just as vibrato works and sounds best when it is added to already beautiful technique. If you begin vibrato before you have refined the following skills, it will be much harder to learn and likely take a lot longer, too. The four skills to master before vibrato are posture, tone, intonation, and shifting.

A metronome is a device that keeps an even beat. Incorporating the metronome into practice can help with a few different things: keeping an even tempo, learning to play faster, and deciphering difficult rhythms. But before it can help you do all of that, you need to learn how to use it, which is exactly what you’ll learn in this article.

There’s nothing more frustrating than having a scratchy sound, especially when you don’t know why it’s happening or how to fix it! The three main causes of scratchy sound are: too much pressure, poor contact point, and a stiff right hand.

The fourth finger (pinky) is the smallest finger, therefore it is also the weakest finger. Additionally, the third and fourth (ring and pinky) fingers share a tendon in the hand, which makes it difficult for the fourth finger to move independently. In this article, you’ll learn tips and exercises to help strengthen your fourth finger.

In this article, you’ll learn what instruments the greatest violinists play including: Hilary Hahn, Andre Rieu, Chloe Chua, Ray Chen, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, David Garrett, and Heifetz.

In this article you’ll learn what a hand frame is, the difference between hand frame and finger pattern, and the optimal hand frame for violinists.

While this question seems relatively straightforward, there are differing opinions on how many positions there are on the violin.

The position is determined by the placement of the first finger. Depending on whether you could half position, there are either 13 or 14 positions on the violin.

Intonation is sometimes confused with tone, but they are two different elements of violin playing. Intonation refers to the pitch of the notes (ie how high or low the notes are); tone refers to sound quality. Intonation is controlled by the placement of the left-hand fingers, and tone is controlled by the bow (right) hand. In this article, you’ll learn 6 ways to practice intonation.

Violin video tutorial and sheet music for Game of Thrones theme.

Shoulder rests help keep your body in a natural position while playing the violin. Shoulder rests are designed to take up the space between your shoulder and chin so that you do not have to raise your shoulder or tighten your neck in order to hold the instrument. There are several types of violin shoulder rests, and the instructions below should cover all of the more “mainstream” ones (Kun, Everest, Viva, Pirastro, etc). If you have a more specialized shoulder rest such as a Bon Musica, you may need to search for additional information. With that being said, let’s go over all of the ways you can adjust your violin shoulder rest: width, height, placement, angle.

The name “Coffin Dance” may or may not be familiar, but I can almost guarantee that you know this melody. The original Coffin Dance song was created in 2010 by Tony Igy, an EDM artist, but the song rose to fame in 2020 upon the death of a Ghanaian woman, Elizabeth’s, mother. Her last wish was that the men carrying her coffin danced in a “special style”. The dance was filmed and uploaded to YouTube and went viral. Memes were created, dances were composed, and this song, Coffin Dance, rose to fame.

Warming up before practice is extremely important for two reasons: it helps prevent injury and get you in the mental headspace for practice. The amount of time you spend warming up depends on the length of time you have to practice that day. My recommended warm up routine is: stretch, exercises, open strings, and scales.

If your violin bow won’t make sound, apply rosin.

There is nothing more frustrating than feeling as though your violin efforts aren’t worth it. You want so desperately to get better, to see the fruits of your labors, to finally master that technique or play that piece, but nothing seems to be working. As a seasoned violinist, I have felt this way more times than I’d like to admit. In my experience, there are three things that can all but guarantee your progress on the violin: practice, feedback, and patience.

Tremolo is the unmeasured, rapid alteration between notes. Unmeasured simply means that the player is free to go at their own pace, rather than playing steady notes with the beat.

There are two types of tremolo: bowed tremolo and fingered tremolo. In bowed tremolo, notes are played in fast succession, and in fingered tremolo, the bow plays smoothly while the fingers change between notes quickly.

Learning the violin (or viola, or cello) as an adult will be harder than learning as a child, but how much so depends on a few different factors: previous musical experience, amount of practice, and ability to trust the process.

There are two things to consider when choosing which violin strings to buy: budget and sound quality. Violin strings come in varying price ranges, ranging from 30 to several hundred dollars per set, so having a specific budget in mind is going to help narrow your choices. Sound quality is also an important determinant. When deciding what type of sound you’re going for (either dark or bright), consider both your instrument’s sound and what sound you prefer. If your violin is a darker instrument, it most likely won’t sound its best with bright strings, and vice versa. Here are the strings I recommend looking into.

In your first violin lesson, you will learn the parts of the violin, how to hold the violin and bow, how to get a straight bow, string crossings, and a scale.

Although the violin and viola are similar, they are two separate instruments with three main differences: their size, their range, and the clef they read.